November 24, 2009

Close of November 2009 Newsletter

I thought I'd close with part of a long, remarkable quote I ran across recently in the book Vitebsk: The Life of Art by Aleksandra Shatskikh. The writer is the Russian suprematist El Lissitzky, and the year is 1920:

"the signs in books produce in us movement of a new order different from the voice and this movement must be strengthened and put in the foreground. the contrast of air pressure in different locations produces wind storms thus the contrast of turning pages should move us. construct the book like the body moving through space and time like a moving relief in which each page is a form-bearing surface and with each turn a new intersection and a new phase of a single structure."

Ah, that imperative "construct the book like the body moving through space and time," it's the stuff of revolution.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

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